Disclaimer: I lay no claim to any licensed characters or intellectual properties that were used in the making of this work.
First Meetings
Somewhere along the way, you've lost sight of who you once were…
The first time that Rockman had met Netto, it hadn't been on the boy's eleventh birthday, and it hadn't been in the form of a Net-Navigator. It hadn't been in the PET, hadn't even been in flesh and blood, but —
The first time Rockman met Netto, it had been as a soul inside a womb, the beginnings of conception and life. It had been as a bonded thought, a symbiotic wish — twin wires connecting them to each other's very beings.
The first time they met, he remembers, was in the absence of anything but light, space, the spark of electricity, in the gap between the first breath of maternal air and the wailing, echoing screeches of physical separation.
(And then, silence.)
The next time they met, it'd been on a bed in a wooden box, barred walls and open roof, and he thinks he remembers that it may have been a 'crib.' Then, the boy had awakened to warmth and peace, brown eyes content and hands holding on desperately to another's.
There'd been a happiness in the silence, a radiance in the way he'd known he was safe, protected, loved. It's a cherished moment, and he falls asleep to the soft coos of his brother — or, at least, that's what Rockman thinks the boy does, thinks he knows.
(It's also one of the few times that Rockman, Saito — a mismatched conglomeration of the living and the dead — isn't suffering, isn't in pain — isn't dying.)
After the first few times, after the first few glimpses of intertwined threads and touched fingertips, after the first few notions of shining eyes and connecting hands, — glee — the days began to blur together. There were hints of summer and sandboxes, of autumn and the chilly nip of the wind, of spring and water and green, green grass, of —
The freezing cold of winter, the warmth and pain and sickness in equal measure, the darkness and the bruises and the flimsy frailty of a deteriorating body, the thump-thok-thump of a failing heart. It's not something he wants to forget, but…
(There are flashes of all the moments in-between, and he can't help but remember.)
It's in the throbbing of Saito's blood beneath human skin, angry rivers running through poisoned veins. It's in the tired, waking moments where another small hand is clutching his own, not knowing that his twin is dying but understanding, all the same, that something's wrong.
(It's in the weepy whispers in the dark and the resigned looks on Mama and Papa's faces, in the sterile walls and the too-slow beeping of the machine next to his small, small bed.)
Rockman remembers the disease as a stuttering skip-skip-beat of his core, a pumping in contradiction of itself, — too fast, too sluggish, too… everything, and — the difficulty of even breathing…
He remembers it as a soft murmuring of sick days and white rooms and the clinical, uncaring air contained within, all built to keep him away from Netto and Netto away from him —
(Built to keep him alive.)
In his darker moments of contemplation, Rockman can even remember the utter blackness of death, remember the uncertainty and fear and emptiness of isolation, loneliness, blankness. Sometimes, he remembers having a chance to forget, be free, but —
Then Saito's soul is being pulled back to earth, and everything fades to —
"Konnichiwa, Netto-kun. Watashi wa Rockman .EXE desu, to watashi wa anta no anata wa atarashī Net-Navi gozen."